


you are

by threadoflife



Series: femlock verse [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Horror, Eating Disorders, F/F, Female John Watson, Female Sherlock Holmes, Female Sherlock Holmes/Female John Watson, Femslash, Genderbending, Genderswap, POV Second Person, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:12:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: You loathe it when she speaks to you of this, your body, and when she speaks her lies; you loathe it even more when her lies become truths in her eyes.





	you are

**Author's Note:**

> For a dear friend. Please heed the warnings.

She holds you, and she tells you.

You want to shrink from her words: they’re poison, they’re lies, such pathetically blatant falsehoods you can’t believe can come over her lips. That she can speak them, never mind think them. You want to shrink from them; even more, you want to take them and tear them to shreds and make her open her eyes to look at you, to really, for fucking once, _look_ at you.

But that’s what she’s doing. In broad daylight, by the window, with the curtain pulled aside. You’re in your dressing gown, which is (always) too large: one sleeve slips down, covers your hand, bares the knob of your acromion. The sunlight cuts your collarbone in a sharp shadow relief.

You think, secretly—twisted—that it’s the only beautiful part of you. Thin skin and bones. But even then, it’s not beautiful enough.

More than her words, you loathe her eyes: that frank, brutal gaze, worse in sunlight and worse than sunlight.

Because her eyes say no. No, this particular part of you, is not beautiful.

It says, instead: all of you is beautiful. Every single part of you. Especially those you loathe. All, all of you is beautiful.

God, no—you can’t. You can’t. Not this, not today, not in the sunlight.

She is fierce, however; fierce, and how you hate it, that brightness of hers, that brightness of spirit and mind, too perceptive. She keeps you there, one hand on the (so narrow) wrist, the other holding your spindly fingers in your own lap, and her gaze locked with yours, open eyes on open eyes.

How you wish she would close hers. She doesn’t understand, can’t understand: this monstrosity of yours, like the disfigured fool, star of the freak show—Jesus. Why is she looking? Why, why can’t she close her eyes? Why—

But the serpent speaks. The words are hissed, the bite is taken. The apple falls from trembling hands.

Truth is spoken: in between the two of you, so intimate, this truth that leads you out of your demented Eden.

Her love is God. This God doesn’t want you anymore, here, in this illusion of perfection. Your Eden, your Hell. Your madness.

“You’re beautiful,” she says, in a rush, after she has drawn her eyes away from the shadowed hollows of your clavicle. “I love to look at you.”

Her hand, with the fingers trembling finely each of them (so precisely how you feel), reaches up to your cheek. She cups it. Her fingertips are warm, odd against the coolness of your cheek. Like this, you feel her trembling, and it anchors you—makes you feel less alone. You two tremble together.

“I love this…” Her voice is low, like she’s speaking something forbidden. She knows you. “You know, when you smile at me. That Joan smile. It makes those dimples appear. The smile that make you look less serious, less like a stick up git…”

You like it when she calls you git. It’s what she calls you with your head buried between her legs, breathless and high-pitched and so, so far gone. It’s your favourite.

“Yes, there…” You see her lips curl, and her fingers lay down flat against your cheek. To your own shock, despite the fact that you can feel the lightness in her voice, the forcedness of it, you are smiling yourself: your Joan smile. You know exactly what it looks like.

“Yes, here we are…” Her voice is hushed, as gentle as her hands on you. “There we go. That’s what I love. So beautiful. So lovely. The fullness of your cheeks, Sherlock…”

And they are full, your cheeks: skin, pushed up, stretched with the secret upward curves of your mouth. That white ghost skin—sickly, your mind insists, sickly, not sick enough—stained red by the persistent flush she is so good at getting out of you. That flush, proof of how you adore, adore, adore her flattery, against her warm palm. She feels it there, and it connects you. Anxious tremors fading for this—the bloom of love, the heat of attraction. The wonder of you two.

“Joan…” you murmur in a slight warning, a threat underlying her name. That’s all you need to say. She understands.

She doesn’t give a toss, for once. The stupidity of a soldier…

“And this bit here,” she says, voice fuller, a little rougher. “Love this bit too.”

As she bends down, she raises your hand from your lap; she turns it; and  she bites, softly but with a firm edge, into the flesh around of your knuckle. She gathers it between her teeth, keeps it there. Pulls back, draws the skin thin and taut. Marks you, with a little, “Mmhh,” and a glint to her eyes.

You watch her do that, strangely breathless. The disgust you feel for all that spare, useless skin feels detached, like it belongs to a stranger.

“All that…” She brushes her lips over the red neat circles of her bite. An apology? No, knowing Joan—a confirmation. This is you. Spare skin, flesh, fat. This is you. This is you, and  I adore you.

“All your skin,” she murmurs, lets your hand go. She leans forward more, pushes her face right into your belly. Her short hair skritches in the sound you love when she rubs her head left to right in the softness of your stomach.

“All your skin, all your flesh. Your fat. Everywhere. I love it when I can feel your thighs around my ears, when they’re pressed so flat because you want me there closer, because you want more.” She speaks softly, hushed. Like it’s a secret between the two of you. “I love the fullness of your cheeks like red apples when you smile for me, just for me. I love the way your butt jiggles when you walk in those heels, that always drives me fucking wild….”

When she looks up, she doesn’t blink as, by bowing forward, making your hair fall over your face for all that shadow, hiding, safe, your tears drop onto her face.

She just stares right up at you, like she did before. Before she ever saw all those fatty places of you; all that softness. With half your hair covering your face, she sees right through you while her eyes are as wet and soft with her adoration for you as they ever were.

Even after… so much softness.

And worse than her words, worse than the words you want to shrink from, even more, you loathe her eyes: that frank, brutal gaze, worse in sunlight and worse than sunlight.

But the serpent has spoken, its poison shed. Between the two of you, in this intimate space, with her bite on your wrist apples in your cheeks, the serpent unleashes its poison: truth. Her truth, not yours. But truth, which, though contradicting one another, yet coexists.

Such is nature: origin of contradictions, mother of change. It’s why you love chemistry, study of change.

This, eyes on eyes, hands on skin, is chemistry, pure chemistry: it sizzles, thickens the atmosphere. Changes—

Changes.

Because Joan is an open book, and her eyes are its pages that you have always been able to read. Terribly, terribly so, they are honest: genuine: authentic. The sentiment in them is real.

A truth. Her truth, not yours.

But truth.

And this truth says I think you are beautiful, you are. You are not beautiful, but you are, to her—to her, you are. Paradoxes that coexist with one another: your respective truths. Your own, you are not beautiful. Hers, you are.

You are not beautiful, but you are.

You are.


End file.
